Lamborghini’s Urus SUV Will Pack 650 Horsepower

It won’t be the most powerful SUV in the market, but it’s still a Lambo

It’s no secret Lamborghini has high hopes for the SUV market when its official entry into the segment, the Urus, makes its long awaited debut later this year. The hype surrounding the Urus is all too real, and Lambo is adding more fuel to that fire after company CEO Stefano Domenicali confirmed what we’ve been expecting all along: the Urus will have 650 horsepower on tap.

The significant output fits into the high-performance mold of a Lamborghini, but fans of the brand will be disappointed to know that even with the SUV’s 4.0-liter bi-turbo V-8 engine releasing that much power, the Urus won’t be the most powerful SUV on the market. For now, that distinction belongs to the Jeep Grand Cherokee Trackhawk, which has 707 horsepower coming out of its 6.2-liter supercharged Hellcat V-8 engine. The range-topping S E-Hybrid variant model of the next-generation Porsche Cayenne is also expected to have a higher output, possibly around 670 horsepower. It does seem that even with 650 horsepower on its hands, Lamborghini is less inclined to package the Urus as an all-conquering powerhouse SUV and more of “family-friendly” Lamborghini. It’s definitely going to be interesting to see how that strategy pans out, but the good news is that we won’t have to wait too long to get our answer. The Urus is expected to go on sale in the latter half of 2018 with a price of around $200,000.

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Interesting tactic by Lamborghini here

SUVs, by and large, are as much about performance as they are about having enough space to fit a family.

Before you start digesting the thought of seeing the words “Lamborghini” and “family-friendly” in the same sentence, it’s important to understand the market the Urus is headed into. SUVs, by and large, are as much about performance as they are about having enough space to fit a family. So while it sounds ridiculous to think about Lamborghini releasing a family-friendly car, the segment dictated that it had to, otherwise it wouldn’t appeal as much to buyers in that market.

So Lamborghini did just that, even if it flies against the power and performance ethos that has defined a big part of the company’s history. And if Lambo wants to be technical about it, the Urus isn’t the first SUV it released. That distinction falls on the shoulders of the LM002, which the Italian automaker produced from 1986 to 1993. The company isn’t diving into this side of the pool for the first time. It knows what it’s doing by packaging the Urus to be a 650-horsepower family-friendly SUV.

The company is optimistic the Urus will do well, partly because of the novelty that comes with seeing a Lamborghini SUV.

No matter the perception, the company is optimistic the Urus will do well, partly because of the novelty that comes with seeing a Lamborghini SUV and another part because of the popularity of the crossover and SUV segments. The Urus will undoubtedly get a tremendous amount of exposure. That optimism often leads to high expectations and the automaker is just as ready to make sure that the SUV can live up to them. Off the bat, Lambo already expects to build 1,000 units of the Urus in 2018 before spiking production to about 3,500 units in 2019. Should the company achieve its goal, the Urus would immediately account for a majority of Lamborghini’s annual production output.

There’s definitely a lot riding on the Lamborghini Urus to be the SUV we all envisioned it to be. All signs are currently pointing in the right direction and if Lambo can keep it that way, it’s got a chance to prove a lot of people wrong. The thought of seeing another Lamborghini SUV after the LM002 was considered laughable as recently as the turn of the decade. Now, it’s being talked about in very important terms. It may not be the fastest or most powerful SUV in the market, but if it sells as well as Lamborghini hopes, neither of those things will matter.